

4 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




008 946 741 A 






Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



- The Roman Catholic Church 
and the School Question. 



By EDWIN D. MEAD. 



BOSTON : GEORGE H. ELLIS. 
1888. 



Price, Fifteen Cents. 



An Address before the Woman Suffrage 
League, Boston, October /, 1888, — revised 
and expanded. 






/Z-H73X 



LC /// 

■/it 

The Roman Catholic Church and the 
School Question. 



When the foolish are hot, it is time for the wise to be cool. 
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, but a habit of viewing 
each midsummer explosion as the crack of doom is not the 
best qualification for the vigilance committee in the time of 
real danger. I trust I shall never be accused of political 
indifferentism ; but sometimes in these heated weeks I count 
it expedient to say to some of my good friends, Republi- 
can friends and Democratic friends, that the present election 
seems to me the least important presidential election in our 
history, and that I think it makes very little difference whether 
Mr. Cleveland or Mr. Harrison be elected. There is no ques- 
tion in the country more important than the school question. 
There is no institution in the country, to my thinking, so 
important as the public school, none whose interests we 
should guard so vigilantly or so jealously. There is nothing in 
the country of which I am more jealous than the multiplication 
of Roman Catholic parochial schools. They will never give any- 
thing but a parochial education, never a catholic and broad 
education, and the system is bad. I am jealous of the constant 
unfair and captious fault-finding with the public schools in 
large Roman Catholic circles, and the manifest disposition to 
multiply criticisms and controversies and make trouble, out of 
which grist shall somehow come to the parochial mill. In the 
general interests of science and freedom and progress, I have 
more criticism to make upon the Roman Catholic Church than 
upon any other of our churches. But much more jealous than 
I am of parochial schools, or of Catholic opposition to the 



public schools, or of any Roman Catholic dogmas or aims or 
methods, am I that Catholic captiousness and unfairness, where 
they exist, shall not be met with feverish unfairness, but with 
justice and more than justice — with magnanimity. Arnold of 
Rugby used to say that the measure of his love for any institu- 
tion was the measure of his desire to reform it. The measure 
of my love for any institution is always the measure of my 
resolution to defend it fairly and only fairly, and of my resent- 
ment of mere violent, blind abuse of its enemies or its critics. And 
it is because my devotion to the American public school is so 
sincere and so earnest, that I wish to express the hope, as a 
preface to such critical words as I shall have to speak, that 
there is not rife in this gathering, or in the association under 
whose auspices we here come together, anything of that spirit 
of wholesale, indiscriminate and wild denunciation of the 
Roman Catholic Church, which has characterized many recent 
meetings in Boston. However it may be with some of our 
Protestant clergymen, I trust that there is no woman in this 
league or in Boston who is bothered by the fear, which 
bothers one of our Protestant clergymen, that Archbishop 
Williams is fitting up some dungeons under the new cathe- 
dral. I trust there is no woman and no man here present 
who did not read with indignation and with shame the charge 
of one of our university professors to one of our large con- 
gregations last Sunday, that " Protestant men and women who 
have Catholic servants in their employ should say to them on 
the eve of election day that if they intended to vote at the 
dictation of the priests they must look for work elsewhere." 
You know what that means. It means the discharge of the 
man or the woman who don't vote as we do. It means the 
boycott and the inquisition. The man who talks thus in a 
time like this abdicates the function of the scholar and adver- 
tises himself an unsafe public guide. No Catholic word has 
been so bad as this. No Catholic word has been so bad as the 
utterances from the platform of Music Hall last Sunday by the 
Protestant clergyman whose fulminations there we have become 
used to. I refer to this, a fair sample of numberless such utter- 



ances, simply because I think some of you may not know the 
pass to which this discussion has come. "The Mass a Roar- 
ing Farce" was the reverend gentleman's last Sunday subject, 
and this interesting episode is reported : 

" He took from an envelope a little wafer, like those used in the 
Catholic Church, remarking that the communicant was not allowed to touch 
the wine cup, this being retained by the priest, who after the service 
generally got drunk on what was left. Romanists say that these wafers are 
the real Christ — these little bits of cracker, which are easily broken, that 
become lost, that fall in the mud, that are eaten by rats. If, as is claimed, 
each one of these wafers is Jesus Christ, then there are a hundred thousand 
Jesus Christs all over the known universe. There is no power in them, 
shouted the impassioned doctor, as he came to the edge of the platform 
and bent his body until his head almost touched his knees. If there were, 
I could not say these things against them. To show you it has no power, I 
will roll it over and break it." 

And we read that the great audience of three thousand people, 
presumably all Protestant people, citizens of this " Athens of 
America," presumably graduates of our public schools,* here 
broke into the wildest kind of applause, which lasted fully a 
minute and started afresh whenever the doctor attempted to 
resume his remarks. I do not know, ladies and gentlemen, 
what some of you may think of a spectacle like this in Boston ; 
I do not think it edifying. It is told of Dr. Johnson that when 
somebody expounded Berkeley's idealism to him, he brought 
his big cane or his heavy foot down solidly upon the earth and 
declared that thus he refuted it; and he has imitators in this 
method of dealing with metaphysical questions, to this day. But 
Dr. Johnson would never have got through the freshman year 
in a theological school without knowing that such a representa- 
tion of the doctrine of the real presence or of transubstantiation 
as that here reported is as untrue — the doctrine, when truly 
stated, is to the minds of most of us a gross error — as the 
method of representation is vulgar and offensive. Equally 
offensive and untrue are the representations of the Catholic 
Church and the Pope of Rome as the targets for sundry very 
uncomplimentary epithets from certain Old and New Testament 
prophets — epithets which have been bandied about not a little 



by some of our Protestant clergymen in this summer's dis- 
cussions about the schools. I read a speech by one of our 
clergymen, at one of the Faneuil Hall or Tremont Temple 
meetings, which was largely devoted to arguing that the book 
of Revelation and even the book of Daniel denounce the Pope 
of Rome ; and last Sunday another announced that the 
" mystery of iniquity " and " that Wicked," spoken of by St. 
Paul, in Second Thessalonians, was none other than this same 
Pope of Rome — evidently overlooking the apostle's remark 
that the said mystery of iniquity " doth already work." Now 
most of us hate to have a case against us "clinched with 
Scripture," most of us having a very high regard for the apostles 
and prophets and desiring to stand well with them. Appeals 
to the Bible therefore against our adversaries had generally 
better be as few as possible. So far as the Roman Catholic 
Church and the Pope are concerned, no thought of either ever 
entered the head of any Bible writer; the notion that there 
could have is ridiculous. When you hear any ingenious Prot- 
estant clergyman going back to Daniel or Second Thessalonians 
or the Apocalypse for arguments on the question of parochial 
schools or of the Boston School Board, I would suggest that 
you urge him, for the sake of economy in time, to skip that 
part of his talk. 

And we have heard altogether too much in these days 
about the impossibility of a man being at once a good Catholic 
and a good American. The answer to such charges is the vast 
number of sincere and earnest Catholics who are among our 
most useful, faithful and loyal citizens. If we remember the 
doctrine of papal infallibility and the papal assertion of the 
supremacy of the church to the state, and if we press the logic 
of creeds and definitions to the extreme, we certainly come to 
a dilemma which the thoughtful Roman Catholic would do 
well to meditate upon. I fully endorse the conclusions of Mr. 
Gladstone, in his pamphlet on the Vatican Decrees, even to 
where he says that "no one can become the convert of Rome 
without renouncing his moral and mental freedom and placing 
his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another." This, I 



5 

say, is the ultimate logic of the doctrine of papal infallibility 
and of ecclesiastical supremacy. But there is not a single 
church in the Evangelical Alliance which was represented in 
the recent remonstrance before the School Board which can 
abide the logic of its creed. "John Ward" was a Presbyterian 
who carried his creed into life with the honest relentlessness 
of the syllogism. I respect John Ward as much as I pity him 
and hate his creed and its logic. But many who are pledged 
to his creed do not hesitate to declare his course inhuman, in 
my ears ; and sure it is that if the men who hold his creed 
should begin to live it out with inexorable logic, Boston would 
soon become a much worse place to live in than it is ever 
likely to become as the result of the Roman Catholic doctrine 
about church and state, to the ultimate logical issues of which 
doctrine so many of our Protestant clergymen are now endeav- 
oring to crowd their simple Catholic neighbors. If a man did 
logically and absolutely appropriate the Calvinistic doctrines 
of total depravity, predestination and the eternal damnation 
of the majority, which are the nominal and standard doctrines 
of half the churches belonging to the Evangelical Alliance, I 
should say that he was an immoral, an inhuman and an irrelig- 
ious man if he allowed himself to marry the woman he loves 
and become the father of children. But as matter of fact 
almost no Calvinist does or ever did hold those doctrines in 
their naked and logical severity. They are always modified 
and complemented in life and in thought by other doctrines, 
often held all unconsciously, by other great imperatives and 
truths of human nature and currents from the nature of things ; 
and it would never occur to me to say, unless in scholastic 
disputation, that my neighbor could not be at the same time 
an honest Presbyterian and a good man. The radical had 
better not tell his Baptist or Methodist brother too often that 
he " renounces his mental freedom " when he subscribes to the 
doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible, as truly as his Catholic 
brother who accepts the infallibility of the Pope. If the writer 
of Genesis could make no mistake, why may not Leo XIII also 
be miraculously shielded? Personally I should expect his 



History of the Middle Ages, which is about to be published, to 
be quite as free from errors as the Jewish books of Judges and 
Kings. As matter of fact, we know very well that the men 
who hold the doctrine of the miraculous inspiration of Genesis 
keep modifying the doctrine so that it shall not bring them 
into too sharp collision with Kensington and Berlin. And so 
the deliverances of papal infallibility will always be trimmed or 
explained away by the common sense of the faithful, whenever 
sufficiently serious exigencies require. Your Baptist brother, 
my good friend, cannot, I say, abide extreme and merciless 
logic ; but you will not tell him carelessly that he cannot be a 
good Baptist and a truthful man. There is scarcely an 
Episcopalian, clerical or lay, in the circle of my personal 
acquaintance, who does not tell me that he does not believe in 
everlasting damnation ; yet all pray to be delivered from ever- 
lasting damnation at least once a week, doubtless with the 
feeling of the old lady who preferred to bow at the mention of 
the Devil in the service — she " thought it was safer." There is 
scarcely a month that I do not hear some Unitarian minister ap- 
proaching the mercy-seat " through Jesus Christ" or asking sun- 
dry benefits "for Christ's sake." It is habit, tradition, survival. 
They have no right to these phrases and will frankly tell you, 
if you ask questions, that they do not accept the doctrine which 
the phrases unquestionably imply. These practices are certainly 
very illogical, strictly speaking they are morally indefensible 
and bad! Yet it would not be right to tell your Unitarian or 
Episcopal brother of this sort, on the rough, common ground of life, 
that he is an immoral and a bad man. Do not then, in rough, 
practical matters, approach your Catholic brother as you have 
been doing. Neither strict logic nor lack of it settles these 
questions. When it comes to strict theological discussion, I 
am as ready to take a hand as anybody, whether it be with 
the Catholic or the Protestant ; but on the plane where we are, 
I protest against this vast amount of talk about the impossibility 
of Roman Catholics being good citizens. Nothing in the world 
can be so offensive to an honorable and patriotic man. The 
appeal is to facts. We are surrounded by good Catholic citi- 



zens. Our regiments in the Civil War were full of good 
Catholic citizens. The late commander of our army, the hero 
whom we have just laid to rest, was a good Catholic citizen. 
One of our Protestant orators, with his pistareen logic about 
ecclesiastical supremacy, has just been saying that if Sheridan, 
on his ride from Winchester, had been met by his priest and 
ordered back, he would have had to turn back and would have 
turned back. I will tell you what Sheridan would have done. 
He would have said, "Go to the devil" — that is all. The 
battle fought and the rebels routed, he might have given ten 
minutes to the priest, time enough — no more — to give him a 
safe conduct through the lines and make an appointment for 
the discussion of ecclesiastical supremacy in the leisure of some 
summer after the war was ended. 

The logic of duty, friends, the dictate of clear truth and 
justice, of humanity and of honor, is much more imperative 
and pervasive and reliable, is a much longer logic, than the 
logic of any Vatican decree, of the Thirty-nine Articles, or of 
the Westminster Catechism. This is not a good year to say 
that the Catholic cannot be a good citizen. This is the third 
centennial of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The power 
of the Pope and the fear of the Pope in 1588 were ten times 
as great as they are today. The jealousy and hatred between 
Catholic and Protestant, the one or the other still sent to the 
stake or the gallows, according as the one or the other was in 
power, were ten times as great in England then as now. It 
was the year after every Catholic feeling had been inflamed by 
the execution of Mary Stuart. Probably half England still 
loved the old church best. Yet when the Spanish Armada, 
under the special benediction of the Pope, its aim the restora- 
tion of the Catholic power in the north of Europe, Elizabeth 
excommunicated and her subjects declared released from 
obligations, — when the Spanish Armada came bearing down 
on England, what Englishman forgot that he was first an 
Englishman, what Englishman asked whether he was Catholic 
or Protestant, as he hurried to the camp at Tilbury or until the 
wreck of the Armada strewed the seas ? So it will be always. 



8 

Let America once really be in any danger from any Catholic 
power, and every healthy Catholic in Boston would rush to the 
recruiting office, snapping his fingers at every papal benediction 
and every papal anathema that could be read to him. The 
Catholic today has great respect for the Pope in his place, but 
if from now on he ventures to meddle unpleasantly with politics, 
he will be told very sharply, as Ireland has just been telling 
him, to attend to his own proper offices. So it will be with 
parochial schools. They will not continue permanently at 
all. They will continue and will multiply for a time if they 
succeed in convincing the people that they give a really good 
education, as good an education as the public schools. But 
if they do not give a sound, broad and liberal education, 
but a sectarian, sickly, narrow education, and if this appears to 
the people, as it will be made to appear if it is the case, then 
all the encyclicals that can be written cannot bolster them up 
here in America in this nineteenth century. Every sensible 
Catholic will see the nonsense of it. He will see that his 
children will not be qualified to enter this great American life 
and to succeed in it. He knows too well what the institutions 
of this country have done for him and for his children, to allow 
any wool to be pulled over his eyes permanently, to serve any 
ecclesiastical interests. He will not long continue to hand 
over his money to build parochial schools, when he can send 
his children to the better public schools for nothing, without 
exceedingly solid reasons for it, much better reasons than have 
yet been given. There will be complaints, there will be revolts, 
then there will be compromises, and the parochial schools will 
fade away. A competent Irish authority has just told us, what 
I believe to be unquestionably the truth, that " if a vote of the 
Irish-Americans of Massachusetts, especially Boston, was taken, 
nine tenths would give the public schools the first place." The 
parochial school is being forced upon the people by the priest- 
hood. The mass of the Catholic people do not want it and do 
not like it. They will like it less and less every day, and, if we 
are fair with them, they will not long have it ; their clerics will 
not face the results of too serious a collision. 



If any of you are in doubt about the patriotism of your 
Roman Catholic brethren, you have only to examine the text- 
books — the histories, the reading-books — used in the paro- 
chial schools. Whatever criticism is to be passed upon some 
of these books — and I have a good deal to say about them 
presently — the lack of the patriotic element in them cannot 
be recorded. Many of these books ring with patriotism. The 
reading-books are as full of patriotic selections as most of the 
reading-books used in the public schools. They ring too with 
the spirit of democracy. The history of Ireland for these two 
long centuries, and the character of the institutions from which 
most of the Catholic emigrants to America have escaped, have 
not been such as to make any of them very enthusiastic for 
monarchies and aristocracies ; and they are not enthusiastic and 
do not teach their children to be. However much " divine 
right " of bishops there may be in the books, there is no 
" divine right " of kings. There is much sharp condemnation 
of tyrannies, much warm approbation of free institutions. 
Towards this American republic there is especially a feeling 
of gratitude for a toleration such as Roman Catholics have 
enjoyed in no Protestant country in Europe. There are pretty 
constant reminders of the intolerance and the disabilities under 
which Catholics have suffered in the Protestant world for the 
last two centuries. And is it to be wondered at ? When we 
reflect upon it, it is a sorry history. The whole Jewish race has 
been dubbed deicides and treated as deicides for eighteen cen- 
turies, because some bigots among them eighteen centuries ago 
chanced to do what the Christian church has been pretty busy 
doing from that time to this — turned over to the executioner a 
heretic who disturbed the peace of Israel. The great mass of 
the people heard him gladly, and the priests were afraid to 
have him arrested openly for fear of the people ; yet the whole 
race has to suffer for it. And the whole body of Roman 
Catholics in Protestant countries for two centuries have been 
despised and called by every bad name that could be invented 
by Protestant ingenuity or raked out of the book of Revelation, 
been denied almost every political and social privilege, treated 



10 

as mere hangers-on in the world, beings existing on sufferance, 
creatures of hardly the same blood as the Protestant — all in 
perpetuation of the exceeding great rage, the well warranted 
and wholesome rage be it said, of our Protestant fathers at the 
corruptions of the sixteenth century. Look no farther than 
England. Few liberal historical scholars will deny the political 
necessities for much of the anti-Catholic legislation in England 
from the time of Elizabeth to the time of William of Orange, 
when the lines that defined political and religious parties were 
so essentially the same. Yet I cannot read the very Bill of 
Rights without a blush ; and the disabilities and oppressions 
of the Catholics of England and Ireland down almost to our 
own time constitute one of the most shameful pages in history. 
Do you say that these wrongs were more political than relig- 
ious ? You have no right to say it until you are ready to say 
the same of the Inquisition in Spain. About which same 
Inquisition, damnable enough surely in any case, very extraor- 
dinary misconceptions obtain. It is not at all uncommon to 
meet with the notion that the business of the Inquisition in 
Spain under Torquemada was to burn Protestants, although 
Torquemada was dead before there ever was a Protestant and 
while Luther himself was yet a boy. There may even be some 
here who would be surprised to learn exactly what prompted 
Ferdinand in his employment of the Inquisition and of the 
attitude of Pope Sixtus in the matter. 

Before passing from the question of the political disabilities 
of Catholics in Protestant States, I should like to call attention 
to the statement which I find repeated in more than one of the 
Catholic geographies, that in the State of New Hampshire 
Catholics are still disqualified from holding certain offices. 
Can it be possible that this is the truth ? 

In the whole matter of toleration, Protestantism has no 
better record than the old church. It has simply been the Ins 
persecuting the Outs — one way in England and Germany, 
another way in Italy and Spain. Elizabeth's High Commission 
was only a Protestant Inquisition, and Archbishop Laud was no 
more tolerant than Torquemada or Catherine de Medici. The 



II 

New England Congregationalist will remember that it was not 
under Mary but under Elizabeth that Copping and Thacker and 
Penry and Barrowe and Greenwood were hanged, and by 
James I that our Pilgrim Fathers were "harried out of England." 
Toleration is not a tenet for which any church is to be thanked. 
It is a growth of civilization, which simultaneously affects all 
churches. Toleration is now popular, and I do not think it is 
likely ever again to become wholly unpopular. These Catholic 
reading-books are full of enthusiasm for it. These Catholic his- 
tories praise nobody quite so much, are quite so proud of 
nobody else, as Lord Baltimore, the Catholic founder of Mary- 
land, the first American colony established on a basis of perfect 
tolerance ; and they are quke as sincere in their praises of 
tolerance as some of our Boston Protestant ministers, and no 
more so. A century hence both parties will be much sincerer 
about it than they are today ; and meantime it is wholesome 
and helpful that they should assume the virtue and praise it in 
their reading-books, even if they have it not. A century hence 
the Protestant party will say less about itself as the promoter of 
rational progress and inquiry, and the Catholic Church as the 
one great obstruction to science and the light. One of the Cath- 
olic members of the Boston School Board, as will be remem- 
bered, recently ventured to deny, in a communication to one of 
the newspapers, the truth of Mr. Swinton's statement, in his now 
famous little book, as to the Church's treatment of Galileo. 
But the facts are notorious ; it is folly and fatuity to deny 
them. But there was nothing remarkable in this treatment of 
Galileo, nothing that the Catholic need apologize for to the 
Protestant. What this gentleman should have done was simply 
to remind the Protestant churches that they were tarred with 
the same stick. The opposition of the Church in Galileo's 
time to the teaching that the earth is round was just like the 
opposition of the Church in ours to the doctrine of evolution. 
Most of us younger men have been brought up on sermons on 
Christianity versus Darwinism ; and until this very latest time, 
when the doctrine has so thoroughly established itself in the 
scientific world that loose condemnations of it have become 



12 

ridiculous, the professor who ventured to talk evolution in the 
Protestant theological seminary was quite sure to be dealt with 
as summarily as Galileo was dealt with by Pope Urban and the 
Inquisition. Luther pronounced Copernicus's book, which he 
lived just long enough to read, damnable heresy. The Reform- 
ers generally ridiculed, despised and hated Copernicus, who 
was himself, as you well know, an honored canon in the Cath- 
olic Church, his name never anathematized by the Church. 
From that time to this, Protestantism has fought as surely and 
steadily as Catholicism every new idea in philosophy, in natural 
science and in Biblical criticism, which affected its orthodoxy, 
until the manifest absurdity of its positions compelled retreat 
and readjustment ; and today St. George Mivart has a vastly 
easier time of it in the Catholic Church than Egbert Smyth at 
Andover or Professor Woodrow in South Carolina. 

It will not be thought, after what I have said, that what 
I shall proceed to say upon the particular question which has 
arisen about text-books in our Boston schools, and about which 
we see this extraordinary excitement among our women, as well 
as among our men, is inspired by any unjust or unfair feelings 
toward the Roman Catholic Church. But it is not for this that 
I have asked your attention to these general considerations. I 
sincerely trust that I shall never be suspected of any unfair 
feeling toward any class in the community, and that it will never 
be necessary for me to give any pledge or proof of a just and 
impartial temper in dealing with any. I have dwelt upon these 
general points, because the particular quarrel into which we 
have been precipitated here in Boston has grown into a general 
quarrel, and we see the melancholy spectacle of a sort of relig- 
ious war, Protestant against Catholic. The result is a mass of 
violent Protestant extravagance, misrepresentation, exaggera- 
tion and abuse much more discreditable than the three-column 
shriek from the Catholic priest in last week's Sunday Herald or 
than any Catholic word which has been spoken. This sort of 
thing we want to see eliminated from the present controversy. 
In an account of the work of Bishop England, of South Carolina, 
in one of these Catholic reading-books, the writer remarks : 



13 

" He soon discovered that the Americans, though bitterly prejudiced 
against Catholics, were yet disposed to be just and even generous. Their 
hatred of the Church arose from utterly false notions concerning her history 
and doctrines, and unfortunately the Catholics possessed no means of 
correcting these erroneous views. The press was in the hands of Protest- 
ants, who made use of it to disseminate the most injurious and absurd 
statements concerning the Church. The great majority of the people had 
never seen a priest, had never heard a Catholic sermon, had never entered 
a Catholic church, and had nothing to rely upon but the false traditions 
which they or their ancestors had brought from England." 

I believe that this is still an accurate description of multitudes 
of American people. I hope that it is not a description of any 
Boston woman now preparing to vote on the school question. 
If any such is within the sound of my voice, I advise her to indulge 
in no general talk about the Roman Catholic Church until she 
has read at least one good book which authoritatively represents 
it, until she has read, if she can get nothing better, some of 
these histories and readers used in the Catholic schools. 
There is much to criticise in these books, but I think that nine 
Protestants out of ten will be chiefly surprised at the good that 
is in them. 1 

*' The Americans," Bishop England found, "though bitterly 
prejudiced against Catholics, were yet disposed to be just and 
even generous." I believe the people of Boston are so dis- 
posed today, and to that justice and generosity I appeal and 
ask you to appeal. To stir that justice and generosity, against 
the hot and intemperate passion which has been ventilated in 
many quarters, is why I have here tried to emphasize the 
points on which the Protestant as Protestant has no right to 
throw stones at the Catholic, and some of the positive Catholic 
excellences and services which some are likely to forget. 
Were I engaged in an apology for the Catholic Church, I should 
go farther. I should enter the great domain of dogma, and 
declare on how many points I deem the Catholic doctrine 
superior to Protestant doctrine. I should tell you that the 
Catholic doctrine of purgatory, an intermediate state in which 



1 The Catholic text-books can all be found at Noonan & Co.'s, 17 Boylston Street, and 
probably at any of the Catholic bookstores. 



14 

men who are not great saints yet not great sinners are purified 
and educated for the higher life, is to my thinking a better and 
a truer doctrine than the sharp Protestant division of all men 
into celestials and hellians, turned either to eternal beatitude or 
eternal torment upon the accident of death. I should tell you 
that the Catholic doctrine of miracle, a doctrine that asserts the 
perennial power of God in the Church, as able to manifest itself 
upon occasion at the hands of Ambrose and Francis or of the 
pious Boston parish priest as at the hands of Peter and Paul 
and Jesus and "them of old time," is a vastly nobler doctrine 
than that of our Protestant churches, which recognizes a super- 
annuated supernaturalism and no other. And I should tell you 
that the Catholic doctrine of inspiration, the doctrine of a Holy 
Ghost that is living and not dead, a divine spirit whose 
authentic utterances are still to be heard among men and not 
simply to be sought for in a book in the library, a Spirit not 
local, historical, Palestinian, but throbbing, omnipresent, in the 
Church of God — I should tell you, if you are Protestants, that 
this doctrine is a sublimer and diviner doctrine than yours. I 
am not, however, engaged in an apology for the Catholic 
Church. I am here tonight chiefly to criticise it. Yet it is 
only as you think upon these things, some of you who have not 
thought upon them, only as you will do the Catholic Church 
the justice to judge it by its ideals and its definitions, as well 
as by its actual perversions, superstitions and narrownesses, 
that you will come to the present practical political questions in 
the proper frame of mind, while they are mixed up, as they 
have now unfortunately become mixed up in Boston, with a 
general religious controversy. 

I do not love the Roman Catholic Church. There is much 
in it that I bitterly dislike and that I dread. I constantly find 
it an obstruction in the way of causes which are dear to me. Its 
general direction, its methods, philosophy, aim and atmosphere 
are largely repugnant to my ideas. As some of you know, I 
have spoken more sharply of its bigotries and superstitions, 
past and present, than I have ever spoken of almost anything 
else — and I am pretty sure to speak sharply again. I am 



15 

always willing to be counted a member of a permanent vigilance 
committee charged with standing sentry on it. But I will also 
always stand sentry for it when it is unjustly besieged. I will 
never be privy to any assault on bigotry by bigotry. Bigotry 
is bigotry, whether Catholic or Protestant, and we want none 
of it. We want no religious crusade in the city of Boston. 
We want to hear no more talk about refusing to vote for this 
man for the School Board, or to approve that woman as a 
teacher in the public schools, simply because they are Roman 
Catholics, until the parochial school movement reaches a stage 
which in my opinion it is never going to reach. Whenever any 
decision or instruction goes so far as to compel any Roman 
Catholic father to withdraw his own children from the public 
schools, when he comes to think it a sin to send them there or 
to act as if it were a sin, then surely it will be a sin for him to 
have a hand in their administration, and his simple manhood 
will command him to withdraw from the School Board, if he 
belongs to it, and from the school-room, if he be a teacher. 
The public school must be in the hands of its friends. No man 
should be tolerated for a day in the administration of the public 
schools who is not a believer in them, no man who will not 
have his own children, if he has children, educated in the 
public schools and not in any private school, whether a Catholic 
parochial school at South Boston, an Episcopal parochial 
school in Brookline, or a private school on the Back Bay. 

You are all quite familiar with the particular occasion of 
the present controversy. But all do not seem to be familiar 
with the actual words in Swinton's history which have led our 
school committee to throw that book out of the schools. So 
intelligent a paper as the Boston Post, in an editorial article 
only two days ago, a very admirable article in the main, 
referred to the passage as representing an indulgence as " a 
permission to commit sin." Such a reference as that at this 
late stage of a discussion which turns on careful definition does 
not do credit to that excellent newspaper. Much more dis- 
creditable is a reference to the note in the same words, in the 
recent report of the committee on text-books to the School 



i6 

Board. What are the words of this famous passage ? They 
occur, as most of you know, in connection with a brief general 
paragraph upon the German Reformation. We are told (p. 320) 
of the dissatisfaction and complaint which were prevalent at 
various practical abuses in the Church and at the claims of the 
popes to interfere in the affairs of the nations, of the resort of 
Leo X to an extensive sale of indulgences, which in former ages 
had been a source of large profits to the Church, to recruit his 
exhausted finances, and of how the offensive manner in which 
Tetzel, the agent for the sale of these indulgences in Germany, 
aroused the opposition of Luther, who, first having appealed to 
the Archbishop of Magdeburg to suppress the traffic, then made 
his appeal to the people by the publication of his famous ninety- 
five theses against indulgences, which precipitated the Reforma- 
tion. And here is the explanatory note : 

"These indulgences were, in the early ages of the Church, remissions 
of the penances imposed upon persons whose sins had brought scandal upon 
the community. But in process of time they were represented as actual 
pardons of guilt, and the purchaser of indulgence was said to be delivered 
from all his sins." 

Well, I maintain that this note states the substantial truth 
of history. What does the text-book committee say in its 
recent report? It says that the teacher who used this text- 
book in the English High School appears to have taught that 
an indulgence " is a permission to commit sin ; " and it continues 
— I quote its exact words : " This is not and never was true. 
It is true that it has been so represented, as the note affirms ; 
but it should add when, where and by whom, and definitely. 
It certainly never was by any duly recognized authority in the 
Catholic Church." 

I am not going to enter upon any discussion of the teacher 
in the High School. That subject is not now on the table, or, 
if it is, it is quite independent of the subject with which we are 
concerned. Mr. Swinton is not responsible for Mr. Travis. 
No author is responsible for the misconceptions or incompe- 
tence of any teacher. So far as particular points are concerned, 
ten times as many mistakes, and ten times as harmful mis- 



i7 

takes, are made every year by Massachusetts teachers about 
the treatment of Quakers and Baptists by the early Massachu. 
setts Puritans, about witchcraft, about the character of the 
Plymouth and Boston colonies, as have ever been made about 
indulgences and the causes of the Reformation. To urge, as 
some have urged, that these should not be touched by a teacher 
or by a text-book, for fear they will not be treated accurately, is 
to bring us to a pretty pass. It is the author's right to pre- 
suppose competent teachers ; whenever any teacher proves him- 
self incompetent, it is our right and duty to engage another. 
It is the author's duty to tell the simple truth ; if he does not 
do this it is our duty to drop his book, and if he does do it it is 
our duty to sustain him. The capital sin in education is to 
accommodate ourselves to ignorance, whether on the part of 
teachers or anybody else. On this policy of the presupposition 
of incompetence, we shall presently have to leave John Rogers 
out of the books, lest the boys and their teachers confound 
him with the Sheffield cutler whose name is on their jack-knives. 
I am quite ready to say, in a single word, that I think some of 
Mr. Travis's illustrations, so far as I have examined the matter, 
extravagant and misleading. I think he may justly have ex- 
posed himself to censure or to correction. He certainly did if 
he spoke in the present tense and not the past, or if historically 
he represented an indulgence as " a permission to commit sin/ 5 ' 
As the committee says, this is not and never was true. But it is 
not true that the note affirms, as the committee says it does, that 
indulgences have been represented as " permissions to commit 
sin." It says that they have been represented as "actual 
pardons of guilt." " It should add," says the committee, " when, 
where and by whom." Well, I suppose the author acted on 
the presumption of brains. He is speaking of the abuses in 
the sale of indulgences, which provoked Luther's protest. In 
the early ages of the Church, he comments, indulgences had 
been regarded in a certain way, but in process of time they had 
become mischievously represented as pardons. The when, 
clearly, is the time of Luther, the time which the author is 
talking about ; the where is the ground, at least, with which 



Luther was acquainted ; the whom are the venal churchmen 
against whom he rose — this is what the boy in the High 
School, with brains in his head, would understand the note to 
mean. It would never occur to the boy to think that the mis- 
chievous doctrine had been decreed and made orthodox by an 
oecumenical council, unless that notion was put into his head 
by an outsider. The mere phrase "in process of time " makes 
it perfectly clear that it was an abuse which had gradually grown 
up in the Church. It was certainly competent for the author to 
explain how long the process of time was, during which this 
corrupting representation of indulgences had been spreading in 
the Church ; but whether the process was long or short affects 
no point involved in the controversy. If the abuse existed in 
Luther's time, which no man in his senses can deny, the book 
is vindicated. As matter of fact, the corruption had been 
spreading for two centuries. It prevailed in England in the 
time of Wyclif, a century and a half before Luther, and Huss 
rose against it in Bohemia. It prevailed in Spain and Portugal, 
in fact, at a time much nearer us than even the time of Luther. 

" There is no greater heresy for a man," protested Wyclif, "than to 
believe that he is absolved from sin if he give money, or because a priest 
layeth his hand on his head and saith, ' I absolve thee; for thou must be 
sorrowful in thy heart, else God does not absolve thee.'' " "It is plain to me," 
he said again, "that our prelates in granting indulgences do commonly 
blaspheme the wisdom of God, pretending in their avarice and folly that 
they understand what they really know not. They chatter on the subject of 
grace as if it were a thing to be bought and sold like an ass or an ox ; by so 
doing they learn to make a merchandise of selling pardons, the devil having 
availed himself of an error in the schools to introduce after this manner 
heresies in morals." 

These words of Wyclif s would have no meaning if this 
" selling pardons " were not rife all about him. The Prologue 
to the Canterbury Tales shows quite sufficiently that they were 
rife. Chaucer was Wyclif s contemporary, perhaps his friend, 
although Catholics claim that he was a good Catholic. Read 
his description of " the Pardoner," in the Prologue : 

" His wallet lay before him in his lap, 
Brimful of pardons come from Rome all hot," etc. 



19 

And Chaucer, who satirizes these corrupt " pardoners " as sharply 
as Wyclif himself does, lets us know that the whole country, 
"from Berwick unto Ware," was full of them. Must Chaucer 
and the poets follow the historians out of the schools ? Wyclifs 
powerful De Ecdesia is full of indignant condemnation of the 
venal representations of indulgence by the English priests and 
bishops ; and Huss, in his strong tractate against indulgences, 
used almost Wyclifs very words and almost the very words 
which Luther used after him. If any of you will read Loserth's 
learned work on Wyclif a?id Huss, and especially the chapter 
on the Controversies on Indulgences in Prague in the year 
141 2, you will almost think yourself reading the story of 
Tetzel and Luther at Wittenberg, so identical is the collision, 
so Tetzel-like the seller of indulgences with his drum and 
money-boxes, so Luther-like the great Bohemian Protestant. 
" All that I have thus far taught," Luther said himself, at the 
time of his excommunication, " I have learned from John Huss, 
but without knowing it." So gross was the abuse which was 
made of indulgences in Prague on the part of the Romish 
Curia, Loserth informs us, that "not only the friends but also 
the opponents of Huss were constrained to raise their voice." 
The King of Bohemia complained to the Pope that his dealers 
" promise heaven to all that will yield up their gold." Huss him- 
self says that Palecz, one of the pillars of the Church in Prague, ad- 
mitted the palpable errors in the articles of indulgence. Of what 
sort were these errors ? They could be of but one sort. They 
made the articles of indulgence, most perilous at best, appear 
still more completely " actual pardons for guilt." How did 
Huss enlist the sympathies of the bright students in the univer- 
sity, if he had no case ? How did Luther so easily win and 
hold the ardent sympathies of the Wittenberg students, if he 
was simply manufacturing his charges against Tetzel and the 
Church ? 

But I think no member of our text-book committee 
would venture to deny the shameless abuse of indulgences in 
Germany in 15 17. It is not necessary to go to a Protestant 
partisan, like D'Aubigne', for our history, although T am not 



20 

impugning D'Aubigne. Go to Ranke, so impartial that he has 
been accused in Germany of writing history from a Catholic 
point of view. Ranke, says his Catholic French translator, 
'guards and defends the church and its heads against unjust 
attacks and multiplied slanders, intelligently appreciates their 
position, their mission, and their duties. His History of the 
Papacy will do more for the cause of religion than Le Maistre's 
book, which has so many charms for the Catholic." Well, 
Ranke observes that the Reformation "may be said to have 
originated in the violent shock which Luther's religious feelings 
received from the sale of indulgences." But what was it in 
this that so shocked Luther ? Ranke describes what it was 
in very short and sharp words — "the doctrine of a forgiveness 
of sins to be had for money." And Ranke, ladies and gentle- 
men, perhaps the most learned and impartial historian of our 
time — Ranke is a bad man to wrestle with. Read his chapter 
on the " Secularization of the Church," in his History of the 
Papacy, for the general setting of Luther's time. Then 
read his German History in the Time of the Reformation, 
read simply the second book of the first volume, to let 
Ranke show you the frightfully mercenary interpretation of 
the doctrine of indulgence which had come about even before 
Tetzel's time, and then show you how Tetzel himself was 
— these are his own words — " the most shameless of all the 
commissioners." But how " shameless ? " I ask again. It could 
be but in one way, I answer — by making the indulgences, most 
perilous at best, appear still more completely "actual pardons 
for guilt." Indulgences, like a multitude of the ceremonies and 
rules of the Church, were prostituted to mere money-mak- 
ing. Where was there a more zealous Catholic than Cardinal 
Ximenes ? Yet even he in 15 13 opposed the attempt to intro- 
duce the sale of indulgences into Spain ; " for there was not a 
doubt in the mind of any reasonable man," says Ranke, "that 
all these demands were mere financial speculations." 

But we do not have to depend upon second-hand informa- 
tion in this matter. Erasmus's Praise of Folly is in the libra- 
ries — and Erasmus was a Catholic Ulrich von Hutton can 



21 

still be read. Luther's Ninety-five Theses are still extant. 
Luther's letter to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, complaining 
of the manner in which Tetzel and his associates were carrying 
on "their scandalous traffic," as he describes it, is still extant. 
Luther's sermon to his own people at Wittenberg, preached 
weeks before he nailed his theses to the church door, is still 
extant, and you may read the synopsis of it, not in the 
Protestant D'Aubigiie', but in the Catholic Audin : 

"They say," he said, "that indulgences, applied to the soul that 
suffers in purgatory, are imparted to it, and accounted for in the remission 
of the sins for which it should still suffer." " If you have anything to 
spare," he says again, "give it, in the Lord's name, for the building of St. 
Peter's at Rome, but do not purchase pardons." " I complain bitterly," he 
wrote to the archbishop, " of the fatal errors in which these men are involv- 
ing the common people, men of weak understanding, whom, foolish as they 
are, these men persuade that they will be sure of salvation if they only buy 
their letters of plenary indulgence. They believe that souls will fly out of 
purgatory the moment that the money paid for their redemption is thrown 
into the preacher's bag, and that such virtue belongs to these indulgences 
that there is no sin which the indulgences will not absolutely and at once 
efface." 

I could continue quoting such arraignments from Luther till 
midnight. These arraignments of the mechanical, venal char- 
acter of indulgences and of absolution at the time constitute 
the whole sum and substance of his quarrel with the Church 
at the beginning. They were prompted by the dangerous 
errors into which he saw his own people were falling. They 
were made on the very ground where the bad business was 
going on ; made by a man who, intense and violent and often 
coarse, was profoundly earnest and religious, not a careless and 
irresponsible talker, but the most learned and powerful pro- 
fessor in the university ; and the justice and crying need of the 
arraignments were instantly recognized by almost every 
serious scholar in the university and every serious man in the 
community. It was not with the doctrine of indulgence as 
such that Luther quarreled at first, although afterwards he 
attacked the whole system. In his very Ninety-five Theses he 
said (see theses 71 and 72), "Cursed be whosoever speaks 



22 

against the Pope's indulgence . . . but blessed be he who 
opposes the foolish and reckless speeches of the preachers of 
indulgence." Even in the explanation which he published 
after his conversation with Miltitz, he still admits the doctrine 
of indulgences in a certain sense. As what less then could 
indulgences have been represented by clerics of the Tetzel 
sort, against whom Luther rose, than pardons, delivering their 
purchasers from the just penalties of sin ? The whole commo- 
tion at Wittenberg has no meaning, the beginning of the 
Reformation has no explanation, unless the doctrine of indul- 
gences was being represented and was being understood in 
the churches around Wittenberg substantially as " the doctrine 
of a forgiveness of sins to be had for money." 

The text-book committee incorporates in its recent report 
a strict definition of an indulgence from a recognized Roman 
Catholic authority. That definition is correct. The following 
definition by our own Dr. Hedge is also correct, and it is more 
profitable for us to listen to, because it shows how easy is the 
corruption of the doctrine, a dangerous one at best, and 
the natural point of transition to those abuses which Ranke 
and Swinton and the various historians record and against 
which Wyclif and Huss and Luther rose in protest : 

"Indulgence, according to the theory of the Church, was dispensation 
from the penance otherwise required for priestly absolution. It was not 
pretended that priestly absolution secured divine forgiveness and eternal 
salvation. It was absolution from temporal penalties due to the Church ; 
but popular superstition identified the one with the other. Moreover, it was 
held that the supererogatory merits of Christ and the saints were available 
for the use of sinners. They constituted a treasury confided to the Church, 
whose saving virtue the head of the Church could dispense at discretion. 
In this case the application of that fund was measured by pecuniary equiv- 
alents. Christ had said, ' How hardly shall they that have riches enter the 
kingdom of heaven.' Leo said in effect, ' How easily may they that have 
riches enter the kingdom of heaven,' since they have the quid pro quo. For 
the poor it was not so easy ; and this was one aspect of the case which 
stimulated the opposition of Luther. Penitence was nominally required of 
the sinner, but proofs of penitence were not exacted. Practically, the 
indulgence meant impunity for sin. A more complete travesty of the 
ospel — laughable if not so impious — could hardly be conceived. The 



23 

aithful themselves were shocked by the shameless realism which character- 
ized the proclamations of the German commissioner, Tetzel." 1 

" Practically," says Dr. Hedge, " the indulgence meant 
impunity for sin." The familiar story told by more than one 
of the old German chroniclers, and passed on by the Lutheran 
historians, has much the same significance, whether myth or 
fact, as showing the short and natural logic of the- common 
man — the story of the Saxon gentleman who heard Tetzel at 
Leipzig, and bargained with him for thirty crowns for a letter 
of indulgence that should cover him in a revenge he meant to 
take upon a man who had defrauded him. Armed with this, 
the story goes, he, with his servants, presently fell upon Tetzel 
in a wood between Jiiterboch and Treblin, gave him a beating 
and took away his chest ; and Duke George, who appreciated 
the situation, good-naturedly let him off for it. The terribly 
mechanical aspect of the matter appears, the slight stress 
which was laid upon the penitence part of the transaction, 
in the fact that one could not only buy indulgences for 
his own sins, but also for his friends in purgatory, who 
were quite beyond the reach of his lowly and contrite heart 
or of any spiritual influence of the Church. An indulgence, 
if it does not free the soul from guilt, remits the punishment 



1 " The theory of indulgence may be said to resolve itself into the two 
positions: (i) that, after the remission of the eternal punishment due for 
sin, there remains due to the justice of God a certain amount of temporal 
pain to be undergone, either before death in this world or after death in pur- 
gatorv ; (2) that this pain may be remitted by the application of the super- 
abundant merits of Christ and of the saints out of the treasury of the Church, 
the administration of which treasury is the prerogative of the hierarchy. It 
must carefully be borne in mind that, in Roman Catholic orthodoxy, indul- 
gence is never absolutely gratuitous, and that those only can in any circum- 
stances validly receive it who are in full communion with the Church, and 
have resorted to the sacrament of penance, in which alone, after due contri- 
tion and confession, provision is made for the remission of the graver penalty 
of sin. The doctrine of indulgences, however, is singularly open to mis- 
understanding ; and in its practical applications it has too often been used to 
sanction the most flagrant immorality. The scandalous abuses connected 
with the ' pardoner's ' trade, and in particular the reckless conduct of the 
hawkers of the papal indulgence granted to those who should contribute 
funds for the completion of St. Peter's, Rome, were, as is well known, very 
prominent among the proximate causes of the Protestant Reformation." — 
Encyclopedia Britannica, article on Indulgence. 

"The plenary indulgence for all, the alleged object of which was to 
contribute to the completion of the Vatican Basilica, restored the possessor 



24 

due for guilt. I speak now of indulgences according to 
their strict definition. And to most men forgiveness is simply- 
escape from punishment. To be pardoned is to be let out of 
State prison. Orthodoxy unquestionably demanded penitence 
,in connection with the granting of indulgence. But the abuse 
of the doctrine, the inevitable and indisputable abuse, brought 
about a state of things with reference to the punishments in 
purgatory to which a man's sins had justly exposed him like 
that which would obtain in Court Square if the judge could say 
to the moneyed thief, " I waive imprisonment for a thousand dol- 
lars, on condition of your sincere regrets." I wish to say just 
here that to my mind such a state of things does obtain. to a 
great extent in the great inequality with which our system of 
fines applies to the poor and the rich — and some of the evils 
of it are very like some of the evils of indulgences. You will 
say that the sinner buying his indulgence knew that he was 
dealing with the divine powers, whose arms are very long, who 



to the grace of God, and completely exempted him from the punishment of 
purgatory. But there were three other favors to be obtained by further con- 
tributions : the right of choosing a father confessor who could grant absolu- 
tion in reserved cases, and commute vows which had been taken into other 
good works; participation in all prayers, fasts, pilgrimages, and whatever 
good works were performed in the church militant ; lastly, the release of the 
souls of the departed out of purgatorv. In order to obtain plenary indul- 
gence, it was necessary not only to confess but to feel contrition ; the three 
others could be obtained without contrition or confession, by money alone. 
It is in this point of view that Columbus extols the worth of money ; ' he 
who possesses it, ' says he seriously, 'has the power of transporting souls 
into Paradise.' Never indeed was the union of secular objects with spiritual 
omnipotence more strikingly displayed than in this epoch. There is a fan- 
tastic sublimity and grandeur in this conception of the Church as a com- 
munity comprehending heaven and earth, the living and the dead; in which 
all the penalties incurred by individuals were removed by the merit and the 
grace of the collective body. What a conception of the power and dignity 
of a human being is implied in the belief that the Pope could employ this 
accumulated treasure of merits in behalf of one or another at his pleasure ! 
The doctrine that the power of the Pope extended to that intermediate state 
between heaven and earth, called purgatory, was the growth of modern times. 
The Pope appears in the character of the great dispenser of all punshment 
and all mercy. And this most poetical, sublime idea he now dragged in the 
dust for a miserable sum of money, which he applied to the political or 
domestic wants of the moment. Mountebank itinerant commissioners, who 
were very fond of reckoning how much they had already raised for the papal 
court, while they retained a considerable portion of it for themselves, out- 
stripped their powers with blasphemous eloquence. They thought themselves 
armed against every attack, so long as they could menace their opponents 
with the tremendous punishments of the Church." — Ranke. 



25 

look through all pretenses and disguises, and with whom it is 
not safe to juggle. Yes, you can say that. But the Wittenberg 
sinner did not say it, and the system did not encourage him to 
think it. Ultimate issues and the divine powers were a very 
long way off, and pretty thoroughly discounted by the great 
mass of intermediaries. It was a system of extreme vicarious- 
ness from top to bottom, and Tetzel's indulgences were its 
reductio ad absurdum. One form of the indulgence was that 
whereby a man paid so much for the intercessory efforts in his 
behalf of the saints and the general heavenly host, and with 
these intercessions your Wittenberg butcher and baker in 151 7 
felt extremely safe, attaching quite as high an efficacy to them 
as to a lowly and penitent heart. The prayer-books of the 
time are one index to the state of things. There are prayers 
to which an indulgence for 146 days, others to which one for 
7,000 or 8,000 years, are attached. If a prayer was so effica- 
cious, what might not the superstitious votary be encouraged 
to hope from thirty crowns ? 

Tetzel was unquestionably an extreme man, as bad perhaps 
as the system could produce ; but him, and many who, if not 
as brazen in the traffic, were just as corrupt, it did produce and 
long sustain. Ultimately his own party was forced to abandon 
him. Miltitz, the papal nuncio, in 15 18, after Luther's vigorous 
onslaughts had made the scandals notorious and roused Ger- 
many, censured Tetzel in the name of the Pope, pronouncing 
" the most entire and distinct disapprobation of the scandalous 
proceedings of the venders of indulgence ; " and his general 
opinion of him appears from the fact of his writing to Pfeffinger 
of " the lies and frauds of this Tetzel." The whole Catholic 
party began straightway to feel the force of Luther's unsparing 
exposures and to take steps to reform itself from within ; but 
the tendencies of Tetzel's time must not for an instant be 
confounded, as many Catholic writers seek to confound them 
in the popular mind, with the direction of things at the Council 
of Trent, which latter was really mainly owing to the stern 
rebukes by men like Luther of the corruptions here considered. 

It should not excite surprise that the doctrine of indul- 



26 

gences had sunk to this low form in the common understanding 
and in common usage, when we consider the general corruption 
of the Church at the time. I could take up a dozen doctrines 
and show you that they had sunk quite as low, when measured 
either by the authoritative doctrinal definitions, by the practice 
of the Catholic Church in earlier times, or by the practice of the 
Church in Boston today. The corruption of the Church, both 
in point of popular doctrine and in point of morals, was such as 
the world never saw before nor since. I do not ask you to take 
D'Aubigne's word for it. I do not ask you even to take Ranke's 
word for it. Read the general accounts by the Catholic Audin, 
and his particular admission of the abuse of the indulgences. 
Read the words of Cardinal Julian, at the Council of Basle, on 
the disorders among the German clergy. Most important of all, 
take the evidence of honest Pope Adrian VI, the successor of 
Leo X, crowned in 1522, when Germany was all ablaze with 
Lutheranism. At the diet of Nuremberg, summoned to deal 
with Luther, this honest Dutch Pope Adrian declared roundly, 
through his legate, that 

" these disorders had sprung from the sins of men, more especially from the 
sins of priests and prelates. Even in the holy chair," said he, "many 
horrible crimes have been committed. The contagious disease, spreading 
from the head to the members, from the Pope to lesser prelates, has spread 
far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to be found who does right and 
who is free from infection." 

If any fact in history stands avouched, it is that the most 
mechanical and venal interpretation of the doctrine of indul- 
gence had become prevalent in the Church in 15 17, and that 
this was the immediate occasion of the Lutheran Reformation. 
The Roman Catholic Church for two centuries before that time 
has a bad record. It is a desire that that bad record shall be 
covered up, that it shall be kept as much as possible out of 
sight and out of remembrance — this, and not any honest fear 
that teachers in our Boston schools will be telling their boys 
that Archbishop Williams or Leo XIII issues licenses to com- 
mit sin — which is the motive of the present Catholic opposition 
tc Mr. Swinton's history. We all of us, ladies and gentlemen, 



27 

have a rather mixed and impure religious pedigree. We have 
all at times, I fear, been miserable sinners. Church of Eng- 
land people cannot be very proud of Henry VIII, of sundry 
proceedings on the part of Archbibhop Whitgift, of the general 
moral condition of the Church at the time of the Wesleyan 
revival, of the system of church " livings," of the fact that a lot 
of their bishops today derive large revenues from the rents of 
grog-shops, of the perversions and extravagances of doctrine 
which have obtained and obtain today in large sections of the 
Church. The New England Congregationalist is not proud of 
the dealings with Quakers and Baptists and witches on the part 
of his ancestors, though his ancestors were no worse in this 
than other people at the time. The Boston Unitarian is not 
very proud, I take it, of the attitude of his father toward 
Emerson and Theodore Parker. But the Roman Catholic is 
haunted to a much greater extent than other people by the hob- 
goblin of consistency. His whole theory of his miraculously 
inspired and guided and shielded church compels an excessive 
anxiety to show a good record. But, ladies and gentlemen, 
the record is very streaked and speckled. The record is black- 
est at the time when Luther was born in Germany. Among 
the abuses of that time none was more flagrant than the utterly 
mechanical and venal ideas of indulgences which were encour- 
aged and which prevailed among the clergy and among the 
people. We are not teaching our children honest history, we 
are not showing them the justification or the explanation of one 
of the greatest movements in history, of the very central and 
most influential movement in all modern history, if we blot that 
fact from their books. In consenting to remove Swinton's 
text-book from our public schools, the School Board of the 
City of Boston has allowed itself to serve the interests of 
ignorance, of narrow prejudice, and of a restive, thin-skinned, 
finikin sectarianism. I say nothing of motives — I know well 
what good motives and what conscientious care there have been 
on the part of men whose conclusions I do not approve — but 
this, I say, is how history will record the fact. And history 
will remember that when this test-case was thus settled by the 



28 

votes of fourteen men — 10 Catholics, 3 Protestants, 1 Jew — 
there stood up in protest two women. I do not say they knew 
more than these others, I do not say they were more conscien- 
tious, I do not say they had thought more about the matter ; 
but I say history will remember that there stood up in protest 
these two women. 

The text-book committee inform us, ladies and gentlemen, 
that before Swinton's history was dropped from the schools, the 
attention of the publishers was called to the defective character 
of the note, and imply that if the note could have been properly 
corrected the book would have been retained. I should like to 
know how serious an effort was made to this end. I should 
like to know what correction the committee would have deemed 
proper. I venture to say that if the publishers of the book can 
be shown tomorrow that there is any real likelihood of the 
note being understood in the schools as referring to today and 
not to the sixteenth century, any likelihood of its being under- 
stood to relate to any doctrinal standard or to present practice, 
the note will be expanded instantly. But I also venture to say 
that the more the note is expanded in fidelity to the truth of 
history, the more explicit the account is made of the abuses 
which provoked the Reformation, the more the book will be 
condemned by those who instigated the present opposition. 1 



1 On the day on which I spoke (Oct. 1) there appeared a communication in 
the Boston Herald, which I had not read, from a prominent member of the 
School Board, Mr. E. C. Carrigan, containing information of very great signifi- 
cance upon this point. Mr. Carrigan is a man with Irish blood in his veins, 
and has expressed very warm and very proper resentment at the deluge of 
indiscriminate denunciation which has been poured out upon "Irish Catho- 
lics " by Protestant orators in Boston this summer. Whether he is himself 
a Roman Catholic or not I do not know. At any rate, his traditions and 
affiliations give him exceptional opportunities to understand the Catholic 
position. What more concerns us here, he is an earnest and energetic sup- 
porter of the public school system. "The establishment of parochial 
schools in Massachusetts " he declares to be " a most serious mistake, if not 
a great misfortune, especially to those who attend them, and that schools 
wholly supported and controlled by the people are the best schools for the 
children of all the people." Nothing in the present torrent of abuse, he 
tells his fellow-citizens of Irish ancestry, should be allowed to weaken their 
faith or interest in the American common school, "wherein the children of 
all Irish parents have an equal chance with others to secure the greatest 
prize of life, an education which fits them for citizenship and to successfully 
compete in the great business and professional world." Speaking of 



29 

I should never have known, had not the present controversy 
prompted me to a critical examination, how excellent a book 
this little history of Swinton's is. I have been especially 
impressed by the impartiality and the rare tact with which the 
author steers through those stormy periods where Catholicism 
and Protestantism clashed — the time of the Huguenots and 
St. Bartholomew's, the time of Alva in the Netherlands, the 
religious persecutions, now Catholic, now Protestant, under 
Henry VIII and Mary and Elizabeth. I should like especially 
to speak of Swinton's warm recognition of the services of the 
Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. I should like to 



Swinton's history, he says, " No topic of such importance as the Reforma- 
tion, whether taught from a text-book or orally, should be presented other 
than fairly, fully, impartially, so that the student may have as clear and as 
intelligent understanding of this subject as others in general history, 
whether it displeases a priest, preacher, parson or other citizen." He shows 
conclusively, I think, exaggerations and errors on the part of the teacher in 
the High School ; although his apology for the dropping of Swinton's text- 
book, "simply and solely because imperfect teaching resulted from its use," 
is certainly a very poor apology. Mr. Carrigan has probably had a larger 
experience in connection with the public schools, perhaps knows more 
personally about the public schools, than any other member of the present 
Boston School Board. And he is, as I have said, an energetic man. While 
the text-book committee was telling us that the publishers of Swinton's 
history refused to change the offending note about indulgences, Mr. Carri- 
gan was in New York reading the page in a proposed new edition of the 
book, submitted to him by the publishers, in which the note is changed. 
And how changed ? Here is the text of the new note, as he gives it : 

" Indulgences were authorized by the councils of the Church as a remission of the 
temporal penances imposed for sins ; and, in the theory of the Church, they always presupposed 
confession and repentance on the part of the sinner." 

If it be true that the author and the publishers of the book have agreed 
to a change like this, omitting the reference to the abuses of the doctrine in 
the time of Luther, which was the one point of moment, they have done 
it to satisfy the Catholic demand. And if this is the Catholic demand, 
then what I have declared above is strictly confirmed — that the motive of 
the Catholic opposition to the book is simply the desire to cover up a bad 
chapter in the history of the Church, the desire that the children in the 
schools shall not learn that Luther had sufficient provocation and Protes- 
tantism its justification. The theory of the Church is not the question; 
the practice of the Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is the 
question. If the charge which I here make is not true, then let the Catho- 
lic opposition declare that the following note would satisfy them : 

Indulgences, as authorized by the councils of the Church in early ages, were remissions 
of the temporal penances imposed for sins. In the theory of the Church, they presupposed 
confession and repentance on the part of the sinner ; but in process of time they had become 
widely represented in the Church as actual pardons, and the purchaser of indulgence was 
said to be delivered from the punishment due for his sins. This gross abuse aroused Luther 
and thus brought on the Protestant Reformation. 



30 

quote his high tribute to the monasteries, which were the arks 
of learning and the centers of almost every civilizing influence 
left in those dark and troublous centuries succeeding the break- 
ing up of the old Roman system. " The Church," he says, 
" was the bridge across the chaos, and linked the two periods 
of ancient and modern civilization." 

I quote this passage for a special reason. It is for saying 
the same thing that one of the members of our school committee, 
Dr. Duryea, was held up to execration yesterday on the platform 
of Music Hall by the passionate Protestant whom I have once 
quoted. Dr. Duryea, as scarcely needs be said to this audience, 
was quite right. He was only saying what every scholar knows 
perfectly well, what not to know proclaims a man in so far un- 
educated. This passionate Protestant went farther. He circu- 
lated a petition, which he asked every man, woman and child to 
sign, urging Dr. Duryea, inasmuch as "he lacks either the in- 
telligence necessary to formulate a correct opinion concerning 
indulgences as taught by popes and practiced by priests, or the 
honesty and bravery to tell the truth," to resign his place on 
the School Board and "give place to a better educated or more 
truth-loving man." Well, I think Dr. Duryea's conclusions 
regarding Mr. Swinton's book erroneous. He does not read 
history as I do, or he is affected by considerations which I 
know nothing of. But the opinion concerning indulgences 
talked of by the gentlemen at Music Hall was never taught by 
any pope with whose teachings I am acquainted ; and a resolu- 
tion such as this of which we read is a disgrace to any man 
who talks of education and the love of truth. The acme of dis- 
grace is reached when children are exhorted to enlist in this 
religious warfare. 

There has been altogether too much arraignment of the 
motives of Rev. Dr. Duryea here in Boston in these last days, 
some of them in places where we have a right to expect better 
things than we expect from the platform of Music Hall. I have 
even heard him criticised for saying, what would seem to be 
obvious to the narrowest intelligence, that he felt his daughters 
to be safer in Boston for the sake of the Roman Catholic 



3i 

Church. Do these critics realize what the Roman Catholics of 
Boston would be, if their religion and their Church were taken 
away from them tomorrow ? There seems to be an agreement in 
some quarters, one is sometimes tempted to think, that nothing 
good and anything bad may be said of the Roman Catholic. 
Some of our clergy have recently set out to describe the per- 
sonal immoralities of certain Roman Catholics in Boston. 
Without doubt a melancholy catalogue could be made. And 
a bad enough catalogue could be made of Baptist adulterers 
and Episcopal embezzlers and Universalist tipplers. Let us not 
make that catalogue this year. And let there be less hasty talk 
about men's motives in complex matters like the present. Let 
us deal with facts as clearly and sharply as we please, but let us 
leave each man's conscience to himself. If I felt sure that half 
of those who have to deal with this matter brought to it half the 
conscientiousness and half the open-mindedness of Dr. Duryea, 
I should be twice as hopeful as I am of the right issue. 

How do our Catholic brethren treat Luther and the 
Reformation ? What do they teach their children in their own 
schools ? Well, here is one of their histories, a very popular 
one, by Gazeau. 1 Here the protest against indulgences and the 
outbreak of the Reformation are made to appear as the result of 
Luther's jealousy and indignation that the sale of indulgences 
was not intrusted to his order, the Augustinians, instead of to 
Tetzel and the Dominicans. He was angry and mortified too 
that the people deserted his pulpit and flocked to hear Tetzel. 
Gilmour and others similarly ascribe Luther's movement to his 
indignation and pique at the " slight " put upon him and the 
Augustinians in not being intrusted with Tetzel's office. Tet- 
zel is praised by Gazeau as an eloquent and learned man, who 
responded to Luther with " a masterly defense," — which, as the 
author truly remarks, the students of Wittenberg burned in 
the university square. Why did they burn it ? The reason 
assigned by our author is their dislike of " free speech." There 



1 Modern History. Adapted from the French of the Rev. P. F. Gazeau, S. J. New 
York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1887. 



32 

is not one word of condemnation of Tetzel and the abuse of 
indulgences. There is only praise for Tetzel, and his success 
is declared to be a proof of " the faith and the devotion of the 
people." Luther is represented as an altogether unscrupulous 
and turbulent fellow. 

"Wicked men," says the author, "are always disposed to rebel 
against authority. The sale of indulgences and the word ' reform ' were 
simply made the pretext by the able but unprincipled Luther for the out- 
burst of the storm that was to devastate Europe and break up the spiritual 
unity of Christendom." 

The general religious condition of Europe, as here painted, 
at the time when Luther rose, is something very beautiful, 
almost idyllic. 

" Christian Europe was at peace, forming but one great family, numbering 
as many members as there were nations. Notwithstanding dynastic troubles 
and national rivalries, all Christendom was united by one creed around a 
common altar and in obedience to the same infallible spiritual authority, 
the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The head of the Church, venerated as the 
universal father of the faithful, sent zealous missionaries to the idolatrous 
races of the New World, while in Europe he exerted his influence to 
encourage learning and to mature Christian civilization." 

It was surely a pity to break into that delightful calm with 
pothering doctrine of justification by faith ! What was this 
doctrine of " justification by faith ? " Why, it was a doctrine, we 
learn, that, " provided men believed in Christ, it mattered little 
what they did" and thus "justified all evil actions." And this 
was specially dangerous " at a time when laxity of morals 
widely prevailed" — for it is admitted that abuses "certainly 
existed," that the lives of many of the clergy were scandalous, 
and that the general state of morals was bad. But why was 
this? And who shall blame anybody for any definition of 
transubstantiation, after this definition of justification by faith ? 
Time forbids the citation of all the characterizations of Luther 
which follow, and which altogether could leave in the mind of 
a boy or girl only the impression of some monster little removed 
from Bluebeard. 
"The pretended reformer respected the laws of morality no more than 



33 

those of justice." " To justify his enormities he said that he was inspired 
by heaven." " No one can peruse without a blush of shame and indigna- 
tion the coarse jests, the buffoonery, and the indecencies with which his 
works are sullied." "It is difficult to conceive," concludes the author, 
" how such a leader could have found followers, were it not known what 
power passion, pride, money and pleasure have over the human heart.'* 
Protestantism spread rapidly because it " pandered to corrupt nature." 

And this explains the success of Luther and the Reformation J 
And "it is very important," as our author says, "that students 
should have a clear conception and knowledge of the causes 
that led to this revolt." Ladies and gentlemen, do we want Mr, 
Swinton's note expanded in that direction ? Does this satisfy 
Father Metcalf's scrupulous anxiety for exact historical truth ? 

Let me hasten to say that this is perhaps the worst of the 
histories which I have examined. But this is a very popular 
history, and others are almost, as bad. It is not this which 
misrepresents Luther's marriage, or describes Calvin as a man 
expelled from the university on account of his immoralities, or 
John Knox as a " bad priest," or as "the ruffian of the Refor- 
mation." 

These books by Fredet and by Spalding, popular books in 
the schools, give a far truer idea of the abuses which provoked 
the Reformation than does this other. As to the man Martin 
Luther, his defense among Catholic scholars may be left to the 
fine and fair minds of their own number, men like Stolberg and 
Schlegel. Stolberg, in his strictures upon Luther's doctrines, 
"would not cast a stone " at his person. "In Luther," he said, 
" I honor not alone one of the grandest spirits that has ever 
lived, but a great religiousness also, which never forsook him." 
This for scholars — but who shall protect the children? Luther 
was coarse — it was a coarse time; he did jest; there is 
buffoonery. But as these things here appear, they are not true ; 
and here they should not be spoken of at all. 

Here is a history — a History of the World, by John 
MacCarthy, l a book of the same scope as Swinton's, to 



1 History of the World, for Schools and Colleges. By John MacCarthy. New York: 
The Catholic Publication Society. 1887. 



34 

which I wish to pay almost unqualified praise. It admits many 
things discreditable to Catholics, which Swinton passes. It 
mentions the fact, which Swinton passes, that a Te Deum was 
sung in Rome, by order of Pope Gregory XIII, in honor of the 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew's, although it makes a lame 
apology for it. Its account of Luther and the Reformation 
is almost entirely admirable, intelligent, spirited and almost 
wholly just, a vastly better account than that in the history 
which I understand is probably to supersede Swinton in our 
schools ; I ask you to compare the two. 1 It is a book which I 
would willingly and gladly place in the hands of my own boy, 
if I had one. I do not think I could myself write a more 
impartial book. An exceedingly good book too is Hassard's 
History of the United States? 

I wish that I might enter upon a more searching examina- 
tion here of the text-books used "in the Catholic schools. I want 
to have you understand just what kind of history the scrupulous 
sticklers for exact truth who are troubled by Mr. Swinton do 
approve, what kind of things they would have children think 
have come about "in the process of time." I shall hope for 
some early opportunity to bring this subject more fully before 
our public, if not in another address, then in the newspapers. 
These books are not without excellences, but on the whole the 
examination of them has been a depressing business. There 
is no book among them worse than this exceedingly popular 
Bible History, with an appendix of Church History, by one of 
the bishops of the Church, Bishop Gilmour of Cleveland, 3 a 
book commended by the Pope, by Cardinal Manning, and by 
almost every leading American dignitary ; in fact, there is no 
•other book which prints so many or such imposing commenda- 

1 Anderson's notice of the Reformation is ridiculously timid and inadequate. Luther 
and his protest are mentioned almost as a by-the-by under the reign of Charles V. No 
account whatever is given of the subject of indulgences. Luther's Ninety-five Theses are 
said to have been directed against " the doctrines of the Catholic Church," a most careless and 
incorrect statement. 

2 History of the United States of America, for the Use of Schools. By John R. G. 
■Hassard. New York : The Catholic Publication Society. 1887. 

3 Bible History, Containing the most Remarkable Events of the Old and New Testa- 
ments To which is added a Compendium of Church History. For the Use of the Catholic 
■Schools in the United States. By Right Reverend Richard Gilmour, D.D., Bishop of 
Cleveland. New York, Cincinnati and Chicago : Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Holy 
Apostolic See. 



35 

tions. It is a thoroughly bad book. I should like to read you 
much from it. I will read a single paragraph, from the close 
of the account of the reigns of the Tudors, in which the 
persecutions under Henry and Elizabeth are made so much 
of, and the vastly bloodier career of Mary is not mentioned. 
"To make converts," the author tells his young readers, 
" Catholicity has ever appealed to reason ; Protestantism, like Mohammed- 
anism, to force and violence. In England and Scotland Protestantism was 
forced upon the people by fines, imprisonment and death ; in Germany and 
Prussia, Sweden and Denmark and Norway, the same. In America the 
Puritans acted in like manner. " 

Ladies and gentlemen, did you ever read the Edict of 
1550, with which Alva went armed into the Netherlands ? Let 
me read you a brief passage from it, for two reasons : 

" No one," said the Edict, " shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, 
sell, buy or give in churches, streets, or other places, any book or writing 
made by Martin Luther, John Ecolampadius, Ulrich Zwinglius, Martin 
Bucer, John Calvin, or other heretics reprobated by the Holy Church ; . . . 
nor break or otherwise injure the images of the Holy Virgin or canonized 
saints ; . . . nor in his house hold conventicles or illegal gatherings, or be 
present at any such in which the adherents of the above-mentioned heretics 
teach, baptize, and form conspiracies against the Holy Church and the 
general welfare. . . . Moreover, we forbid," continues the Edict, " all lay 
persons to converse or dispute concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or 
secretly, especially on any doubtful or difficult matters, or to read, teach, or 
expound the Scriptures, unless they have duly studied theology and been 
approved by some renowned university ; ... or to preach secretly or 
openly, or to entertain any of the opinions of the above-mentioned heretics ; 
... on pain, should any one be found to have contravened any of the 
points above mentioned, as perturbators of our state and of the general 
quiet to be punished in the following manner." 

And how were they to be punished? The Edict went on 
to provide that such perturbators of the general quiet are to be 
executed, to wit : the men with the sword and the women to 
be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they do 
persist in them, then they are to be executed with fire ; all their 
property in both cases being confiscated to the crown. The 
Edict further provided that any who failed to betray a suspected 
heretic, or who lodged or entertained any such, or furnished 
any with food, fire or clothing, should be liable to the same 



36 

punishment as if suspected or convicted themselves. All who 
knew of any persons tainted with heresy were required to 
denounce them, on pain of severe punishment; and the most 
ignoble principle of human nature was appealed to in the 
further provision " that the informer, in case of conviction, 
should be entitled to one half the property of the accused, if 
not more than one hundred pounds Flemish ; if more, then ten 
per cent of all such excess." Treachery to one's friends was 
encouraged by the provision, " that if any man, being present at 
any secret conventicle, shall afterwards come forward and 
betray his fellow-members of the congregation, he shall receive 
full pardon ; " whereas it was ordered that if any person, of 
whatsoever condition, should ask for the pardon of any con- 
demned heretic or present any petition in favor of any, or if any 
one having authority should grant any pardon or favor, he 
should be declared forever incapable of civil and military 
office, and be in danger of severe punishment besides. 

You will say, perhaps, that Holy Church and Holy Philip 
did not really mean this. They meant to terrorize the Nether- 
lands by hanging up this frightful proclamation, but it is against 
all conscience and all humanity that they should carry it out. 
My friends, during the six years of Alva's government in the 
Netherlands, his executioners put to death 18,000 persons, to 
say nothing of the victims in cities captured by his troops or 
the hosts that fell in battles. 

I read this edict, I say, for two reasons : as an illustration 
of the Catholic " appeal to reason," as opposed to the Protestant 
methods of " violence and force ; " and as being one of the things 
which the Catholic text-books "fail to state." "The manuals 
of geography hitherto used in our schools," says the preface of 
one of these geographies — and the manuals of geography are 
largely manuals of history — "are not only objectionable on 
account of their misstatements, but are still more objectionable 
and defective on account of what they suppress or fail to state." 
It is interesting to go through these books and observe what 
they " fail to state," and then observe some of the things to 
which they are able to give so much space. There is room to 



37 

state that Ireland "is noted," among many other things, "for 
the unwavering fidelity of its people to the Catholic Faith ; " but 
there is not room to state that the Netherlands are noted for 
anything besides their " low situation, numerous canals and 
windmills." There is room to speak of "many Catholics" ex- 
iled to Siberia, but of nobody else ; to note that the States of 
the Church are " at present usurped " by the King of Italy, but 
to say almost nothing else about the whole history of Italy. A 
primary object everywhere is to make these books for school 
children serve the purposes of theological and sectarian con- 
troversy. 

How about America? Here is Sadlier's smaller geogra 
phy * — a very popular book in the parochial schools, and, like, 
the other books in the series, a beautiful book. It contains 
probably all the history of the United States that some of the 
younger and poorer children, who leave school early, ever 
get. If they do get more, I could quickly show you that they 
are quite likely to get what is worse. Let me read to you the 
section devoted to the history of the United States (Lesson 
xxxiii, p 22) : 

What can you say of the United States? — It is the most populous and 
powerful country in America. 

By whom was this country originally inhabited ? — By the Indians. 

By whom were the Indians dispossessed of their lands ? — By the 
Spanish, English and French colonists. 

Who were the first explorers of great portions of our country ? — Cath- 
olic missionaries. 

Who discovered and explored the upper Mississippi? — Father Mar- 
quette, a Jesuit missionary. 

Where, in many of the States, were the first settlements formed? 
— Around the humble cross that marked the site of a Catholic mission. 

What political division is the United States ? — A republic. 

How long has it been a republic ? — One hundred years. 

To what nation did the thirteen original States belong ? — To England. 

When did they declare themselves independent ? — July 4th, 1776. 

Why did they declare their independence ? — Because they were un- 
justly oppressed by England. 



1 Sadiier's Excelsior Introduction to Geography. Designed for Junior Classes. By 
a Catholic Teacher. New York: William H. Sadlier. See also O' Shea's CompreJiensive 
Geographies. New York: P. O'Shea. 



38 

What is the war called which occurred at this time between the United 
States and England ?— The war of the Revolution. 

What Catholic nation very materially assisted the Americans during 
this war ? — France. 

How long did the war of the Revolution last? — About eight years. 

At its close, who became the first President of the United States? 

— George Washington. 

This is the whole lesson. This is the general account of 
the colonization and early history of the United States. And 
this is a good sample of the proportion of the role assigned to 
Jesuit missionaries all through these books. You have heard 
of the boy who once asked his father, who was forever telling of 
his tremendous exploits at Bull Run and Gettysburg and Cold 
Harbor, " Father, did anybody help you put down the rebell- 
ion ? " The descendant of the New England Puritans or of 
other worthies, whom some of us have been in the habit of 
thinking as standing for something in this American enterprise, 
is moved to ask the Jesuit, when he reads of all his accom- 
plishments, in these books, " Did anybody help you found the 
American republic ? " 

Under the special head of New England, in this particular 
geography, comes this further historical information, so admira- 
bly calculated to clear up anything left doubtful as to the gene- 
sis and significance of New England in particular: 

What was the first settlement in the New England States ? — A Jesuit 
mission on Mount Desert Island (in 1612). 

By whom was this settlement destroyed ? — By the English. 

What people made a permanent settlement in Massachusetts in 1620? 

— The Pilgrim fathers. 

Who were they ? — English Protestants who, being persecuted by their 
Protestant fellow countrymen, took refuge in America. 

How did they act in their new home ? — They proved very intolerant, 
and persecuted all who dared to worship God in a manner different from 
that which they had established. 

That is all. The important, significant thing about the 
founding of New England is supposed to be told — there is no 
room for anything more than the leading facts. Now, ladies 
and gentlemen, you do not need to be told, and the makers of 



39 

this book do not need to be told, that this is not history. 
History is not history at all save as its proportions are pre- 
served. The Jesuit missionaries were heroic men and they 
are most interesting figures — we are glad that our own Mr. 
Parkman has written so much and so well about them. But 
their settlements and efforts were sporadic, and have had almost 
no influence upon the main currents of our American life and 
the development of our institutions, whose sources are here 
left almost unnoticed. The " Jesuit mission on Mount Desert 
Island" should not be mentioned in a primary text-book. It is 
questionable whether even Father Marquette should be men- 
tioned in a book which has no space to tell how the present 
Northwest became what it is. The boy or girl who learns his- 
tory from such books learns no history. 

These geographies are stamped on the title-page as by a 
" Catholic teacher." Many of the books are marked as belong- 
ing to a "Catholic Educational Series." Here is the "Young 
Catholic's Fifth Reader," almost every portrait in it that of a 
bishop. This Third Reader, " in common with the other books 
of the Catholic National Series, has one chief characteristic," 
says the preface, " viz., a thoroughly Catholic tone, which will 
be found to pervade the whole book." x About that there is no 
doubt. From the first story, on " Bessie's First Mass," to the 
pieces on " How to be a Nun," " Saint Bridget " and " The 
Saint Patrick Penny," the " thoroughly Catholic tone " never 
fails. The Catholic name and atmosphere and effort are every- 
where. Ladies and gentlemen, that is bad. My good Catholic 
friends, that is bad for you, bad for your children. It is not 
good for any of us to let our denominationalism be the "chief 
characteristic " of any of our books, much less of our children's 
books. We do not want, any of us, Catholic reading-books, nor 
Quaker spelling-books, nor Jewish geographies, nor Baptist his- 
tories, nor Presbyterian grammars, nor High Church cook-books 
nor Unitarian geologies, nor Trinitarian arithmetics. I have 
heard a story of a little girl who belonged to a Presbyterian 



1 The Third Reader. Catholic National Series. By Right Rev. Richard Gilmour, 
D.D., Bishop of Cleveland. New York: Benziger Bros. 



40 

family, coming home from school in some distress because one 
of her young Jewish friends had claimed that Jesus was a Jew. 
"Rachel says, mother, that Jesus was a Jew." "Yes, dear, 
Jesus was a Jew." " But how could he be a Jew, mother ? 
Was he not the son of God, and isn't God a Presbyterian?" 
I wonder sometimes, when I note the sectarian atmosphere that 
prevades many homes, that God isn't thought to be a Presby- 
terian or a Baptist much oftener than he is. And our dangers 
will grow much graver than they are if we extend this sort of 
thing into our schools and set our boys and girls to studying 
Episcopal histories and Catholic geographies. 

My good friends, we cannot afford, any of us, to live and 
breathe in these provincial atmospheres. You cannot afford, 
my Catholic brother, to let your boy grow up feeding on such 
history as I have said something of here tonight and as I may 
say more of at some other time. Defend your religion, in 
heaven's name, with all the vigor you will, and you may be very 
sure that nothing that is true and good in it has anything to 
fear. But do not so far wrong yourselves, do not so wrong your 
children, as to permit them to grow up prejudiced and jaundiced 
by such teachings as these. Let us at any rate have "free 
trade " in knowledge, or if " protection," then not protection by 
a Chinese wall bristling with vulgar misrepresentations of our 
neighbors, and thick and thin excuses and denials of all our 
own family faults. 

My Catholic brother, are you doing your duty as a citizen 
of this free republic, are you doing your duty to your children, 
if you let them get their history from books in which every 
"stronghold of bigotry and intolerance" is always an anti- 
Catholic place ? Is it right to let them be taught that " the 
Holy See has been Qod's instrument in conferring upon Europe 
all the real good she enjoys ? " Is it right to teach them that 
" to Catholics are due nearly all the valuable inventions we 
have ?" Is it right to teach them that "the only bond of unity 
among Protestants is a common hostility to Catholicity ? " Is it 
right to teach them that the English free-thinkers from whom 
Rousseau and Voltaire drew some of the ideas which wrought 



4i 

the French Revolution were men who "denied the difference 
between good and evil?" Is it right to represent the Thirty 
Years' War as a Lutheran rebellion assisted by " the Protest- 
ants of France," saying no word of Cardinal Richelieu's hand in 
the matter? Is it well to harp so much on Salem witchcraft, 
and to say nothing of the 600 condemned in one district in 
France by Boguet, of the 50 who suffered at Don ay, of the fact 
that the "witches' hammer" — one of the "inventions" not 
catalogued by Bishop Gilmour — was the work of two German 
Dominicans ? Is it right to record the reported answer of the 
Duke of Guise to his Huguenot would-be assassin, " If your 
religion teaches you to assassinate me, mine obliges me to 
pardon you," and to fail even to mention the assassination of 
William the Silent by the paltry wretch, Gerard, an assassin 
fortified for his task by "holy communion," and applauded as 
the doer of a laudable and generous deed by his most Catholic 
Majesty of Spain, who, upon the assassin's execution, elevated 
his family to a place among the landed aristocracy ? Is that 
the honest way of teaching history? Is it honest and is it right 
to represent William the Silent — " the only ruler in the world's 
history," as says an English writer, " who may fairly be com- 
pared with Washington" — as an "ambitious mover of rebell- 
ion," who was " in turn, as best suited his policy, Lutheran, 
Catholic and Calvinist ? " Prove to us, Father Metcalf and 
gentlemen, that you are in earnest in your scrupulous anxiety 
for honest history, by sweeping out of your schools the books 
which swarm with things like these — the pages are all at your 
service — and then we shall be readier to believe that it is as 
historical scholars and not as Catholic partisans that you desire 
to correct Swinton's record of the abuses which provoked the 
Reformation. Meantime, it is all a mournful and farcical 
straining at gnats and swallowing camels. 

I have too much respect for multitudes of my Catholic 
fellow-citizens of Boston to believe that they approve of this 
strong sectarian teaching in the parochial schools, or that they 
will long continue to approve it when they carefully consider it. 
It has now become their duty to consider it. It is now their 



42 

duty to ask whither they are being led, and to refuse their sup- 
port and to refuse their sanction to any institutions which are 
nurseries of prejudice, of slander and of mischievous false- 
hoods. Let the reform begin among themselves. Let the 
thoughtful Catholic citizens of Boston read these books ; let 
them read this history of Gazeau's ; let them read this book of 
Bishop Gilmour's ; and if they do not instantly demand more 
radical expurgation than any of them have ever demanded for 
Mr. Swinton's book, then they are not the kind of men that I 
believe they are, and may God have mercy on their souls. 

The Catholics among us — still the vast majority — who 
are the warm friends of the public school, and who dislike this 
system which it is now sought to foist upon them, should know 
that these very text-books are made weapons wherewith to 
attack the public school. " He held that Catholic schools are 
scarcely less important to the progress of religion than 
churches," it is approvingly told of one of the bishops, in this 
reader, " since, if we permit our children to be educated in the 
public schools, their faith, if not destroyed, will be undermined ; 
and he strove in every way to fully arouse the Catholic mind to 
what he considered to be the greatest danger to the progress of 
the Church in the United States." My Catholic brother, you 
should warn these men that if the public school, if free and 
impartial education, simple knowledge, is the greatest danger 
to the Church, if the Church cannot maintain itself by the 
simple " appeal to reason " of which Bishop Gilmour tells, can- 
not hold its own in a fair field, then indeed it is in a bad way. 

But it may be urged that this is all nobody's business. 
The Catholic priest may say that he has nothing to say about 
any books used in any Protestant private school, and that 
people have a right to do what they please in their own affairs. 
My good friend, that argument is quite out of date. You are a 
hundred years behind the times when you say that. You shall 
go to school to my friend's five-years-old boy, if you have not 
got beyond that. " Let Jack alone," Will said to Dick, who 
was quarreling with Jack about his sled ; " the sled is his, and 
he has a right to do whatever he will with his own." " No, 



43 

sir," retorted Dick, firmly, "he has not a right to do whatever 
he will with his own ; he only has a right to do what is 
right with his own." It is not our policy in this republic to 
foolishly or hastily or oppressively meddle with any society or 
with any man. There will never be any interference with any 
man who, for religious reasons or any other, chooses to educate 
his children otherwhere than in the public schools, so long as 
that education is done in any just, proper and respectable way. 
But our people do not recognize the right of anybody to do- 
whatever he pleases with his own. The interests of the State 
are paramount to the caprice of any man or any body of men ; 
the whole community is under sacred obligations to each child 
born into it, and every one of us is on his good behavior. There 
is no society among us whose affairs are or can be simply its 
own affairs ; and if rank abuses or the teaching of palpable and 
baneful untruths become common and regular in any private 
school in Boston, whether on Moon Street or Chestnut Street 
or Marlborough Street, then it is inevitable that sooner or later 
there shall be such State supervision as shall stop it. 

With reference to the present stress, men ask, and women, 
What shall we do ? Well, I should say, in the first place, that 
anything that anybody " does " in a fever is not worth the doing. 
Let fever on the school question, I should say, stop in Boston, 
and stop now. There is no crack of doom in hearing. The 
public schools of Boston are in no danger if every man on the 
School Board is a Roman Catholic next year and the year after. 
Their interests are endangered if injustice is done, in their 
management, to any man or to any church. And injustice 
would be done if all should be insisted on which, by a strict 
construction, may be due. Men talk of making the reinstate- 
ment of Swinton's book in the schools a test in t this conflict. 
They would know, were they good generals, that, whoever is to 
blame for it, that position is lost. I do not want to see it re- 
gained on the present basis of intelligence or in the spirit in 
which alone it would be regained. And, if you are Protestants,, 
and if you choose to look upon this as a campaign, then remem- 
ber that you belong to the town of Sam Adams, and that the 



44 

motto of that prince of tacticians was, " Always keep the enemy 
in the wrong." Your cause will never suffer from your gener- 
osity ; it may suffer much from envy, hatred or malice or any 
uncharitableness. Insist on nothing that the great majority do 
not concede to be fair, and keep on telling the truth as fast as 
you are quite sure you know what the truth is. 

Upon you, the women of Boston, there has suddenly come 
a very great and a remarkable responsibility. You are sud- 
denly called upon to exercise political power under the most 
trying of conditions, when politics is mixed with religious ani- 
mosities and the most violent appeals are made to prejudice 
and passion. The enemies of woman suffrage will be quick to 
point to every extravagance and indiscretion on your part, in 
the brave performance of a trying duty, as an impeachment of 
your cause as women. That cause can only be advanced by 
this experience, whatever the vote may be this year or next. 
It is not the less important that the coming vote be sober and 
intelligent, uninfluenced by the violent partisanship of either 
Protestant parson or Catholic priest. I do not say this to the 
women of this league — I sincerely wish that the voting of the 
men of Boston would be as just and careful as yours is sure to 
be — but I say it to the hundreds of women whom it is in your 
power to reach. 

As concerns our School Board, I sincerely wish that 
sectarianism might never again be recognized in connection 
with it. I wish that no man might ever again submit a petition 
to it in his capacity as member of any Evangelical Alliance, 
but only in his capacity as a citizen of Boston. I wish that 
none of us might speak of any church having a " fair share " 
of representation on the Board. No church, Catholic or Pres- 
byterian or Unitarian, is entitled to any "share" of the School 
Board, or to be thought of in connection with the School Board. 
The School Board is not an ecclesiastical tribunal ; it is not, as 
it has sometimes become in some cities in our country, a way 
station for ward politicians on their way to the Common Council ; 
it is the body charged with the education of the children of 
Boston. The direction of the public schools of Boston is a 



45 

work as momentous as the direction of Harvard University. 
More money is concerned, the interests are as high. The 
School Board of the City of Boston should be a body as 
dignified, as responsible and as well trained as the overseers 
of Harvard University, composed of those men among us who 
are actuated by the loftiest public spirit and who know most 
about education. The history of Boston has been such — this 
is no reflection upon anybody, I do not state it as anything 
that any cultivated Catholic can resent, there are cities where 
it would not be true — that the proportion today of our better 
educated men who are Catholics is but small. Leaving out the 
question of sectarianism therefore, which always should be left 
out, I should expect that the large majority of the Boston 
School Board today would not be Catholics. Such a condition 
would be only proper. Yet Boston has very many Roman 
Catholics as worthy as any of her citizens of place on the 
School Board. No vote should ever be withheld from any 
because he is a Catholic. But let us hear no more about any 
church being entitled to a "fair share " of representation. 

I have endeavored, ladies and gentlemen, to give you the 
most serious word which it is in my power to give on this exciting 
and important question. I have spoken more severely upon 
some points than it is my wont to speak; but there are matters 
upon which " plain truth is all the kindness that will last." I 
am less anxious to help any side in this immediate controversy 
than to improve the occasion to direct more careful attention 
to facts which will remain to affect tomorrow's controversy also. 
I cannot doubt that out of all this commotion will come in- 
creased devotion on the part of every good citizen to the great 
interests of the public school. Despite all criticism and all 
grounds for criticism, our public schools are doubtless better 
today than they ever were before. Let us resolve, every one 
of us, to make them better still. 

I wish for one that we might see a decadence of private 
schools altogether. Mo one could speak more warmly than I of 
many of the private schools of Boston and of other cities, and 
the private school doubtless has a certain proper place, but 



4 6 

I do not wish to see the system grow. I have little more 
affection for the Protestant private school than for the Cath- 
olic. The private school tends to create and encourage class 
distinctions, it draws away the personal interest of many 
parents, men whose interest we most need, from the public 
school, it does not make for sturdiness, it does not make for 
•democracy, it does not make for public spirit. I wish that 
every one of you might read — it has been published, and 
you all can read it — the noble address of Phillips Brooks 
at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding 
of our Latin School, and let it help you realize that it is 
the public school and the public school alone in which and 
by which our boys and girls can be trained to that public 
spirit and that free and equal democratic feeling which are the 
fundamental requirements in our democratic State. And then 
— this is my last word — go back two thousand years and 
more, open Aristotle's Politics to his chapters upon public 
and private schools, upon education in relation to the State. 
Read those pages well, for nothing wiser has been written from 
that time to this, and learn from that old " heathen " that no 
polity, no State, can long endure, that none is safe, whose 
children are not educated in hearty sympathy with its institu- 
tions and with its own fundamental principles. Ponder the 
pages of that old " heathen " well, ladies and gentlemen, for they 
contain the truth necessary for these times. 



Martin Luther 



A STUDY OF REFORMATION. By Edwin D. Mead. Cloth, 
i2mo, 194 pages. Price, $1.25. For sale by all booksellers. Sent, 
postpaid, on receipt of price, by the publisher, George H. Ellis, 
Boston. 

An essay upon the significant phases of Luther's life and work, 
with special reference to present problems of reform ; discussing the 
principles of Individualism and Rationalism for which Luther stood, 
and the Libertinism, the Old Orthodoxy and the New Orthodoxy 
with which he came into conflict. First published on the occasion of 
the Luther quadricentenary, this work is less a historical study than 
a tract for the times ; and as such it is chiefly commended to the 
attention of those who are interested in the questions which now 
agitate our churches and general religious circles. 



We recall the sensation of pleasure with which, a year or two ago, we turned from the 
■swarm of bulky Carlyle books of high and low degree to Mr. Mead's discriminating and com- 
pact little volume on The Philosophy of Carlyle. With a similar sensation we welcome, 
among the host of books, reviews and magazine articles on Luther and his times, Mr. Mead's 
Martin Luther, a Study of Reformation. It has the same firm literary qualities as the study 
of Carlyle. The book exhibits that combination of conciseness of statement with breadth of view 
which ought to be a good deal more common than it is, since, as a rule, it is only the author 
who has half-mastered his subject who needs reams of paper to express himself. One cannot 
read the first chapter without perceiving that here is a book which is worth while. — Boston 
Journal. 

Mr. Mead's monograph on Luther is a bright and panoramic view of the movement of 
the Reformation, written somewhat in the fashion of Carlyle's French Revolution, and 
intended to exhibit Luther as he lived, battled, thought and served. It lets in light which, if 
not new, has not been sufficiently used by others. What is most marked in Mr. Mead's work, 
and it is perhaps more manifest in this volume than in anything he has heretofore wiitten, is 
a certain mental freedom, a grasp of the right conditions of his subject, an outlook upon the 
world from a fresh point of view. After all that has been written about Luther, Mr. Mead 
gives us better insight into the world in which he lived than any of the writers who have 
helped to celebrate his 400th birthday. — Boston Advertiser. 

Mr. Mead's plan is to set forth the conditions of life in the sixteenth century, the state 
of society, the way things were looked at on both the Protestant and Catholic sides. He pre- 
sumes a familiarity with the history, at least with its outlines, but goes beyond that, and seeks 
to revive Luther's points in theology, his quaint notions, his broad and generous humanity, 
the things in which, by his age and nationality, he was a different man from the American. 
These features distinguish Mr. Mead's work from that of other writers, and give it a zest of 
its own. He brings Luther nearer to ourselves than Kostlin does, or than any of the recent 
anniversary orators did. He does more. He interprets Luther to the modern mind and 
spirit. He discusses Luther for his time, but with the breadth and vigor of a thoroughly 
modern man. — Boston Herald. 

The word here spoken by Mr. Mead is one much needed at the close of the debate 
called forth by the Luther anniversaries. These chapters tell us, what is well worth hearing, 
that the Roman answer to the great demonstration of enthusiasm for Luther's memory has 
been nothing more than a warming over of the ancient dish of absurd and monstrous calumnies 
which, from Luther's time until now, has been served up for the satisfying of the faithful. It 
is a good service to point out, as Mr. Mead has done, that what seems to many the failure of 
Protestantism is nothing more than the failure of certain schemes and certain combinations 
going under the name of Protestant ; while the real thing, the spirit of Protestantism, is mov- 
ing on in other forms to ever-new victories. Mr. Mead's hero-worship is far from that blind 
reverence which sees only good in its object. He recognizes Luther's faults and dwells upon 
them. Only he insists that these faults, which have been seized upon as a reproach to the 
great cause, had really to do with the cause only in so far as they helped to make up the 
mighty individuality of the man. — The Nation. 

Those of us who remember that, when the market seemed burdened with books about 
Carlyle, it was the little volume by Mr. Mead that was welcomed here and in England as the 
word that helped most of all to clear the atmosphere, and show the rugged Scotchman in his 
true position, are prepared to expect help from the same pen in gaining a true conception of 
the word and work of the great German. This book is all one great sermon, ending, in the 
good old style, with an improvement suited to our present time and situation ; only it "must be 
understood that it is a sermon without a dull line. — Chicago Tribune. 



The Philosophy of Carlyle. 

By Edwin D. Mead. Cloth, i6mo, 140 pages. Price, $i.oq. 

To those who wish a final, reliable judgment concerning Carlyle, we recommend th& 
perusal of this book. — Christian Register. 

Mr. Mead's book is to be commended as the most thoughtful and satisfactory account 
of the great man that has yet been given to the world. — The Christian Union. 

After the vast amount of material relative to Carlyle, which has found its way into the 
papers and magazines during the last months, it is a pleasure and a relief to take up an essay, 
like that of Mr. Mead, in which a sincere attempt is made to fix Carlyle'-s true position. 
Mr. Mead's view is broad enough to take in all of Carlyle's work. — Boston Journal. 

In this revival of interest in Carlyle as a man, and especially in the thinker'-s gift to his 
race, we hope that Mr. Mead's bright and acute book on the Philosophy of Carlyle will be 
read widely by those who knew little or nothing of Carlyle until the gossip about him began. 
Students will have read the book ere this, since it was published in 1881. But many young 
persons are coming up now, who know nothing of the power and inspiration which an older, 
generation gathered from the rough old Scotchman. Mr. Mead's book will be a great help as 
an interpreter. More than this, Mr. Mead is a harmonizer — one who sees both sides of a 
subject, and can show their relation. And he has given us, in his thoughtful, appreciative and 
just analysis of Carlyle's philosophy, the one thing lacking in that philosophy. He has given 
us the counterbalancing doctrine that, although the individual life is the real power and the 
goal of all true effort, that individual life must be developed in all humanity by democratic and 
cooperative measures rather than by overawing superiority in the elect few and their stern 
control of the many. — Provide7ice Journal. 

English critics call attention to the fact that the best book on Carlyle's work as a thinker 
and writer is this American book — The Publishers' 1 Weekly. 

Among the crowd of papers and treatises which the public interest awakened by the 
death of Carlyle has called forth, this book deserves qareful mention It bears upon every 
page traces of earnest thought, refined sentiment and high culture. — The hiquirer, Loudon. 

Mr. Mead writes as an earnest thinker, thoroughly at home in his subject ; and his 
essay is therefore of value. — Cambridge {England} Press. 

This"work is marked by such a thorough yet discriminating admiration of Carlyle as 
proves that its author has clearly and firmly grasped Carlyle's method, spirit and principles. 
Such books as this of Mr. Mead will help in the formation ot a sound public opinion. — 
Edinburgh Daily Review. 

For sale by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the. 
Publishers, 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON. 



Faith and Freedom, 

By Stopford A. Brooke. Edited, with, Introduction, by Edwin D. Mead. 
Cloth, i2mo, 366 pages. Price, $1.50. 

This volume of sermons by the great English liberal preacher, selected chiefly from his 
later works, has been prepared for the special purpose of illustrating his theology and the 
general character of his religious thought, which have become matters of such peculiar interest 
by reason of his separation from the Church of England. An Appendix contains the much 
discussed letter to the congregation of Bedford Chapel, in which Mr. Brooke announced his 
withdrawal from the Church of England, and the sermon," Salt without Savor," in which he 
more fully stated his reasons for the step. The volume forms altogether the completest possi- 
ble index to the nature and development of Mr. Brooke's thought, and is calculated to render 
an invaluable service at the present time, when men everywhere are so eager and anxious for 
clear and solvent words upon the questions of religion. 

For sale by all booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the. 
Publisher, 

GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 Franklin Street, Boston. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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